RE1000 - Increase the range

Question

I bought this extender to increase the range of my Linksys E3000. What a disappointment! The performance decreased with the extender: it dropped from 10+ Mbps to 1-2 Mbps. When I was close to my router than the extender, my laptop and all other wireless devices kept connecting to the extender instead of the router.

Answer 1

The RE1000 is meant to extend the range of an 802.11n network. While the device has the ability to extend the signal for a traditional 802.11g router, still it is not recommended. The reason for this is because the RE1000 is built to extend 2.4 Ghz 802.11n signals which use MIMO as well as other advanced technologies, if attempting to extend a G network you will not achieve the desired performance because it is not optimized to extend standard 802.11G signals.
Remember that the RE1000 will only extend the 2.4Ghz frequency. Meaning that if you have a router that is dualband you can only use an extender on the 2.4Ghz channel. The 5 Ghz channel does not currently have an Extender available for it. Since some dual band routers have the ability to select which frequency you want activated. Always make sure 2.4 Ghz is enabled if you are having troubles configuring.
When possible remember to use the Setup Utility and make sure the RE1000 is close to the router when first setting it up. The utility will test your network performance for you.
Remember to quickly get to the RE1000 after it has been setup, you can click on Computer > Network > then look in network infrastructure to see the RE1000. Double Clicking will launch the setup page.
Lastly and most importantly, remember that in order to get the best performance from an RE1000 you need to place the extender in an area where you still have at least 50% signal strength to your router when you place it in the final location where the RE1000 will be used. To configure the RE1000 you will need to login to the UI after you have put the RE1000 in the final location to verify the signal strength below is a reminder about signal bars and what they mean as a reminder
For ALL configurations you should have between 2-3 bars of signal at the very least. If you have less we will need to move the RE1000 closer to the router. You can also check the status on the status page of the RE1000 as well. On the status page it measures both Signal Strength and Signal Quality. If either set of bars is red you must move the RE1000 closer to the Router.
For better reviews, you can visit: http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-RE1000-Wireless-N-Range-Extender/dp/B005FDXMJS